No one has rated this review as helpful yet1 person found this review funny

Not Recommended

18.9 hrs on record

Posted: May 18

This is a burnout game with the handling of gran turismo and the drifting of underground 2. It doesn't know what it wants to be. there's no attchment to your car, no custimization, no cops during free roam, and no real getting to know the city you're in at all. I grew up on Need for Speed Carbon and the Original Most Wanted being the gold standard for what a Need for Speed game should be. Not that I wish every game were like those two games, but that those two games perfectly captured what it means for a game to be "Need for Speed".

The Police chases in this game are a bit more interesting with the weapons and everything, but honestly it still feels emtpy for some reason.

Side note, the sound design is truly awful. Every sound is compressed until clipping and it makes everything sound fake and nasty. If you know anything about sound design, you probably know what I'm talking about.

Crashing isn't seamless. They cut to a cutscene every time you crash, like in burnout. While burnout is awesome, you can't do takedowns in every single event type, which makes no sense at all. So even what's fun about this game is limited to certain game modes.

There is too much time spent not driving your car. Let me explain. After each race or police chase, there is a ton of screen time devoted to a bunch of stats and your rewards. And it takes a LOT of time. Yes, I get it, I got a new car. I don't need a cutscene for that. I just want to get back on the road.

Speaking of which, every time you start an event, there is an non-optional cutscene you must sit through to inroduce you to the race or chase. Every. Single. Time. And even when you press A to skip, it doesn't skip. Sometimes it will go on for another few seconds before letting you drive. It's asinine. Let me drive.

Unlike previous NFS titles, this game is not seamless in any way shape or form. Part of what made Underground 2 till Carbon so amazing was that everything was seamless. You can drive there and start a race while in free roam. This game is not like that at all. This is a burnout game, like I said.

Now, I LOVE me some Burnout. Don't get me wrong, but holy bejeebus, this game doesn't want to be a burnout game at all.It has all the elements of a burnout game without any of the follow through. This game is hellbent on giving you the feeling that it wants to be realistic, but when the cutscenes are so stylized and the physics are so confusingly all over the place, it's really hard to buy into the world. Especially when the world isn't seamless and has no intention of really grabbing you by the eyes. Previous NFS titles did this much better.

I was really hoping to like this game, but I can't. I don't recommend this. You should just buy a burnout game.

The lack of an option to choose manual gears really makes this game not worth my time. Sure, it's an arcade racer, but that explains removing mechanics from more realistic racers to some extent. I'm fine with "brake to drift" mechanics and I have no problem with games that allow me to take sharp turns at 300 km/h, they're pretty fun. Limiting the player to just auto transmission, however, is basically removing an essential factor of driving that almost every other NFS title features. Just imagine Carbon's canyon duels without manual transmission.

The only game of its kind you will find on Steam. There just aren't any other games that have this Cops and Robbers style gameplay (at least not that I know of). It is a must have for anyone who enjoyed the original Hot Pursuit games of the PS1, PS2, Gamecube era. You can start it up at any time and always have fun with it. One thing I did notice, though, is that the arcade style feel of the game lends itself better to a controller than it does to a full steering wheel setup.